Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

crude office. “Wouldn’t you agree, Kelly?”

The regiment’s chief of scouts stepped forward, holding out his hand. “Luther S. Kelly.”

“Some call him Yellowstone,” Miles announced as he himself settled in his canvas chair behind his cluttered desk awash with maps, far too many sheets of foolscap, scattered ink packets and bottles, as well an assortment of nibs, pens, and pencils lying about in the utmost clutter.

“Seamus Donegan,” he said, shaking the handsome Kelly’s hand as he pulled off the wolf-hide cap.

“That’s a nice head of hair you have there, Mr. Donegan.”

“Yours ain’t so bad either,” Donegan replied. “Call me Seamus.”

“Yes, Seamus,” Kelly said with a grin. “So how did you manage to keep so much of it on your ride north along the Tongue?”

Donegan liked the civilian immediately. Standing there, he could not remember having met a man more handsome than Luther S. Kelly. “Didn’t come all the way down the Tongue.”

“That explains it, Kelly,” Miles snorted. “Where’d you strike the Tongue, Mr. Donegan?”

“Mouth of Pumpkin Creek.” Seamus watched Kelly wag his head. He grinned with those huge teeth of his. “Damn luck of the Irish, t’ain’t it?”

“I think what we’re trying to say, Mr. Donegan,” Miles began, “just yesterday we had ourselves … an ugly incident with some Sioux who came in to talk over terms of surrender with me.”

“Let’s call it what it was, General,” Kelly said abruptly with that rare impatience of his, turning to Donegan. “The Sioux camps south of here along the Tongue sent in some chiefs to talk with Miles.”

“And?” Donegan asked. “What’s the incident?”

“Some of our Crow scouts got to five of the Sioux before they reached the post,” Miles admitted morosely. Then he raised his face, his eyes lit with a smoldering fire. “Damn, if I could have gotten my hands on just one of Leforge’s yellow-bellied Crow.”

“Did … did any of them Sioux escape?”

“Most,” Kelly replied. “Right after they watched the five get murdered in cold blood. They turned right around and hightailed it back up the Tongue. So you can understand our amazement: here you just slipped downriver while they were escaping upriver to their camps.”

Miles asked quickly, “Yes—did you see any sign of Indians?”

“No, none.” Donegan’s head swam, thinking that it had been only a matter of a day that Providence put between him and those escaping Sioux. “The Crow killed the chiefs coming in to talk surrender?”

“Some damned good men among those delegates,” Miles

said.

Kelly added, “And now the Crow have skedaddled back to their agency—what ones the general here hasn’t already punished.”

“Punished?”

“Taken away their army weapons and horses.”

Scratching at his thick beard, Donegan said, “Damn, if that ain’t rotten luck, General Miles. You get them Lakota ready to listen to terms of surrender—then your Crows cut up five of their chiefs. By the saints! There’s gonna be hell to pay now.”

“Ain’t that the gospel?” Kelly concluded.

“I couldn’t blame them if they didn’t trust me enough to talk peace, to come in and surrender to us now,” Miles admitted quietly, staring at the floor a moment until he suddenly looked up at Seamus. “So what of this message you say you have from General Crook?” Miles asked, the fingers of one hand drumming rhythmically atop the clutter on his desk. “Verbal or written?”

“Written, of course, General,” Donegan said, politely using Miles’s brevet rank.

“Let’s see it.”

“Of course,” and Seamus reached inside his three shirts to where he carried the flat leather dispatch envelope against the last layer of clothing, a gray wool undershirt. He watched Miles rise, take the leather envelope, then sit again to work at the leather thong.

“Perhaps Crook is planning on waging a campaign again this winter?” Miles asked as he spread apart the leather flaps and pulled the folded pages from the case. “He wants me to operate in concert, I suppose.”

“He was … er, has already waged his campaign,” Seamus corrected himself.

“Don’t say?” Miles muttered, concentrating on the pages he was unfolding. He looked up momentarily. “What do you know of Crook’s last fight?”

Seamus straightened. “I was there, General.”

“I see,” the colonel replied, his eyes returning to the pages covered with Crook’s scrawl.

Kelly inquired, “You say Crook has waged his campaign?”

“Over and done. Likely the outfit is already back at Fetterman by now.”

“Getting ready for Christmas, I’ll wager,” Wyllys Lyman said.

Donegan said, “I figure there won’t be any celebrating for Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry until they reach Fort Robinson again.”

“Ranald Mackenzie?” Miles asked as he looked up from the papers. “What I wouldn’t give to have his cavalry! What I couldn’t do with his cavalry along!” Then the colonel went back to reading his messages.

“We pitched into a big village of Northern Cheyenne the last week of November,” Donegan explained to Kelly and the other officers. If he hadn’t had the room’s attention until then, the Irishman sure had it now. The place became hushed.

Hobart Bailey asked, “Cheyenne?”

“Little Wolf, Morning Star,” Seamus answered the aide-de-camp’s question. “Proven warriors and veterans, all. That was a long day in hell, it was.”

“No doubt,” Kelly replied.

Miles looked up again. “Says here Mackenzie drove them off before he destroyed the village that fell into his hands.”

“We drove the survivors into the mountains, and Mackenzie’s boys burned everything to the ground. But before they did, we found more than enough plunder from the Custer fight to show that village was at the Little Bighorn when the Seventh met its fate.”

Miles laid the messages down atop his maps with a dry rustle and slowly rose from his canvas chair. “Damn, but I’d give a year’s salary to have a regiment of cavalry like that at my disposal. And now Crook tells me he’s booking it in for the rest of the winter, when I could put those soldiers to bloody good use.”

“Going in for the winter is just what I hope to do my own self,” Donegan said.

Miles came to the side of his desk. “Plan on heading south, are you?”

“I’ll stuff myself with all the warm food and coffee I can, sleep for a good twenty-four hours, then get what dispatches you want me to carry back to Fetterman for you, General.”

Miles looked at Kelly. “Is that a wise course?”

“No, sir,” the chief of scouts replied, his grin fading as his face went somber. “Not by a long shot.”

“It’s your choice,” Miles declared, staring at Donegan as he settled back on the side of his desk. “I take it you’re on Crook’s payroll.”

“Yes, General.”

“Then you can decide, Mr. Donegan. I won’t seek to advise you one way or the other—”

“But I will,” Kelly interrupted. “Listen, Donegan. You go south up the Tongue, by yourself or with a battalion of soldiers … you’re going to run into trouble. That’s where the Sioux are.”

“Then I’ll jump east to the Powder,” Donegan argued. “It’s a better route for where I need to go anyway.”

Miles crossed his arms and asked, “Back to Fetterman?”

“Then on to Fort Laramie from there,” Seamus answered, watching Kelly wag his head and turn to the window.

“So, Mr. Donegan,” Miles said, “does this mean you’re giving up scouting for the army?”

“Didn’t say that, General. It’s just … there ain’t all that much work for a man when Crook’s got his army disbanded for the winter. And, besides …”